Day 230: Integrating Small Pieces Into The Big Picture

There's a big problem I have as a writer, one I've been struggling to solve since I first put pen to paper. I have no problem coming up with a big structure. I think the overall plot and character arc of my stories are workable and I have fun coming up with them. I see scenes in my head also, good scenes that make me want to write them. But making those scenes fit with what I know should be happening is just a nightmare. If I had to put it down in one sentence, it would be that I struggle to fit small scenes into a large structure. Somewhere between viewing my story as a single whole, a big undulating stretch of time where stuff happened, and viewing my story as a living thing where the scenes are happening in real time, something gets lost. I don't know what it is or how to solve the problem, but I've found in the past that just formulating the questions I have is a great first step in figuring out how to answer them. This one, unfortunately, feels like one of those that comes with experience more than anything. I'll have to dig into at some point though, so here goes.

I've stumbled into this problem in a number of different subjects I've given the ol' college try. Software development is notorious for this issue. The client or the management or even the developer themselves wants a certain outcome, but when they really get down to the nitty gritty, all those little coding tricks they have to use, the hacky parts they'll come back to fix later, the 3rd party software they're forced to swap out for something cheaper, the objects that end up defunct by the end, it all adds up to alter the end product in ways nobody can foresee. The study of economics suffers the same problem. Do you look at the economy top down, from the basis of big, underlying statistics like unemployment or inflation as does the federal reserve? Or do you go bottom up, surveying individuals, building case studies of singular markets, or even single companies to understand what's going on? Both are necessary to understand the economy holistically, and yet often they seem to indicate different (even opposing) things. When I tried my hand at drawing, I found that zooming in to a single piece of a drawing looked ok, but all of it put together looked like a terrible mess, or worse, an uncanny amalgamation of weird parts that don't fit together. Sometimes its a me thing, and sometimes it seems like everybody who ever looked at anything had this problem. The physical sciences have famously been searching for a 'unified field theory' for generations, without much luck. The problem is again the same. Drilling down as deep as you can go into the minutia of the universe reveals that what you think you understand about the big picture is tragically underbaked. It feels like some sort of bizarre universal constant. The movement of the individual units that make something up rarely reflect what you hope to find based on the movement of the whole.

Well I'm not solving unified field theory any time soon. But maybe I can fix this in my own writing somehow? I think the best way would be to generalize and copy a fix that some other field has come up with and mastered. The only advice I've heard from other writers is that it will all come out in the editing. Maybe that's just an unavoidable part of writing, that there will be glaring issues to solve when it comes time to edit, but man. It would be nice to be able to think about the whole of a story and zoom all the way in and see everything between for once. I'd like to just write a story and have it be written. An unachievable goal, maybe, but the closer I get, the less editing I'll have to do and the faster I'll be able to work. All good things.

There's only one group of people I can think of who seem to have put all the pieces together. Who can, with no editing whatsoever, create art that is a profound movement in an overarching sense while at the same time having intricate supporting details to tickle the viewer pink. Or in this case, the listener. I think musicians have this figured out the best because there's something that makes them unique compared to other artists. Of course songs can be labored over and written at length, but musicians can also improvise in real time. It's not exactly a unique skill on its own, but the thing is, they can do this with a given time span and progression beforehand. In other words, they're given the big picture (or invent the big picture) and then form the minutia along the way without having to go back over anything. They can go from beginning to middle to end, keep it interesting the whole time, in time, and resolve things beautifully without having to rehearse a specific piece. They can even break away from the previously given big picture and come back in without any issues. With practice, all the minutia are trained in, the muscle memory is formed, the knowledge of theory is integrated. Then given a chord progression and a rhythm, somehow their brains just spit out a complete work on the spot, often without any single note being considered a true mistake. There's no editing possible, no second chances. But some of them do this over and over and over again every night, taking practiced chunks and refitting them, inventing brand new sequences, tailoring and inventing and morphing the things on the fly and using those new things to inform yet more until a complete work is formed. It never ceases to amaze.

I guess it would probably take a lifetime to figure it out completely, but maybe I can pick up a trick or two with some study. There has to be a few things I can learn, surely. This post will have to be continued next time, after I've had a chance to think about some things. Sorry for the cliff hanger.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley